Recruiting: Technology is a Facilitator, Not a Replacement

In my latest article, Communication is Key to Recruiting Top Talent, I received a really interesting comment on how social media tools have not replaced traditional recruiting roles.  While this should be obvious, I think it’s important to note that technology tools don’t replace recruiting roles but more importantly help recruiters to more effectively complete the actions they already perform on a daily basis.

One of the best examples is recruiting through social media (or social recruiting).  Recruiters that are utilizing social media to attract top candidates aren’t necessarily doing anything differently from what they did before, but are using social tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to more effectively and more quickly reach a wider audience of possible candidates when building their talent networks.  And I think this is an important distinction.

Technology is the great facilitator.  It provides a variety of benefits to users helping them to be more effective in the tasks they already do.  Here are the three major benefits that new technologies can provide:

Time Savings: Technology can be a great way to save users time on repetitive tasks so they can spend time on other more important tasks.  Tools such as job ad distribution help users to automate tasks that traditionally has been done manually.

Measurement / Analysis: Technology can help you collect data and measure the activities you and your users perform on a daily basis.  Giving you valuable information to make informed decisions on your overall strategy.  Tools such as Google Analytics help us measure the impact of our online activities and recruitment metrics are a perfect example for recruiting.

Reach: Technology can help us communicate with each other (and everyone in our network) quickly and more effectively.  Tools such as IM and Twitter allow users to reach all their contacts instantaneously to have quick important conversations and pass on valuable information.

All in all, technology won’t the replacement for recruiters,  but it will be a facilitator of recruitment marketing activities we already do!  Use these tools to make your current recruiting efforts more effective but do not expect these tools to run your recruiting efforts without a thought out recruiting strategy behind it.  Because the tools need to fit your overall recruiting strategy, not the other way around.